


I'll hold you like I do love you

by skyekingsleigh



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Cheating, College AU, Friends With Benefits, Love Triangles, M/M, and i mean a lot of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22555384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyekingsleigh/pseuds/skyekingsleigh
Summary: “Don’t bring her here, Peril,” Napoleon tells him. His voice is quiet and they are ten feet apart, but Illya hears him loud and clear, like a drum beating right next to his ear. Napoleon’s voice is so quiet it deafens him. “Not here.”Illya exhales through his nose, the air hot against the coldness of the area, of the situation. It should not be like this, he thinks. It never should have gotten this far. But Napoleon is Napoleon, and Illya is a weak, weak man. So even if nothing in their situation is okay, he says this instead: “Okay, Cowboy.”
Relationships: Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo, minor Illya Kuryakin/Gaby Teller - Relationship
Comments: 7
Kudos: 75





	I'll hold you like I do love you

**Author's Note:**

> i can't seem to write this pair without angst. heads up for very very imperfect and flawed characters. they make a lot of bad decisions. not sure of the timeline with this one, but it's probably late 90s to early 2000s. title from The Paper Kites' "Arms." The song basically sums this up so please listen to it if you have the time. 
> 
> -

There’s a weird feeling of escape in the way a car drives down a city in the cusp of midnight–the roads empty yet the lights ever bright. The hum of the engine shouldn’t be this loud, but in that moment every hitch of breath and every flicker of eyelashes against freckled cheeks resonate. He lets the feeling take over his being, like cold water splashing against his already shivering body, even lets his eyes drop at the sensation of being there, of escape, of being free. Like this. With him. It’s every dream he’s ever dreamed and somehow _more_ , so he sighs a little contented smile into existence, because this wouldn’t last, he knows this, but he doesn’t need it to.

He just needs this.

-

Illya is certain only of two things:

(1) There are icicles forming at the ends of his hair. It is his fault for going out with the strands still wet on a January morning in Boston. There’s a black chunk of metal the size of a tiny novel gripped in his hand that people call cellphones, but he still has not figured out how to use it properly yet. He just knows that it makes an annoying sound whenever someone wants to talk to him, and he needs to push at a button to hear them. It is weird, but he is a top student from Harvard. He will learn.

(2) He doesn’t know why quite yet, but Napoleon Solo has an unusual pull over him. It’s not something he is to be proud of, but it is not something he could deny as well. The American quirks his lips a certain way and Illya will feel all resistance crumble. It is most interesting; apart from all the times it annoys him. Napoleon likes to make fun of Illya’s turtle neck sweaters and flat caps, but he wears suit and ties at every chance he gets, so he’s not much different in Illya’s eyes.

There’s a café near BU, and it’s quite a walk, but Illya likes it there the most. They make the best brew he has ever had in America, so it makes up for the frozen limbs he acquires every time he needs coffee and spends fifteen minutes a hair strand away from hypothermia. That was an exaggeration. Illya’s from Russia; he’s used to the cold. The seats in the coffee shop are as comfortable as he could find for his six foot five frame, and the baristas don’t look at him funny whenever he stays too long reading a book or writing his school papers. It’s nice. He meets Napoleon there.

He is an enigma, Illya thinks, in the same way that Illya is a lonely man. Napoleon will wear a smile, sometimes bright enough to cover the dimness of his blue eyes, and Illya thinks that no one else notices but him. He doesn’t care if he notices too much about Napoleon. He’s been built that way ever since four months ago when they met–Napoleon standing in front of a framed painting by the café’s brick walls, staring inquisitively up at the artwork while Illya watches him from afar, intrigued but too much of a coward to do anything about it. An older lady approaches him, apron tied neatly around her waist and hair up in a bun. Her nametag read ‘Erin.’ Illya doesn’t know why he remembers that.

“Don’t even try Hun,” she drawls in an accent Illya can’t place. Perhaps it’s Southern? It’s akin to the ones he would hear on TV as a child, standing outside of shop windows and watching grown men prance around with their big hats and bigger horses. “That one’s fake.”

Napoleon scoffs. Illya remembers pondering over the arrogant sound. “I’d have known that if it had been placed twenty feet away from me, Erin. Art History major, remember?”

“Doesn’t stop you from wanting to steal it, though, does it?” Erin gives him a pointed look, but she’s wearing a very fond smile. Illya looks at Napoleon’s hands, then, the way it clenches at the accusation. He thinks the lady is right. This man is a thief, or he used to be one. Illya forgets that thieves never really stop stealing, do they?

Napoleon smiles bitingly at the woman before glancing around. That’s when their eyes met, blue to blue, but it’s different. Illya doesn’t like his own eyes. It’s too dark that sometimes they look black. Sometimes he is overcome with his emotions and his pupils drown out the rest of the color. He doesn’t like his eyes. He likes Napoleon’s, though. He doesn’t know what to do with that information.

“Do I look like a thief to you?” He doesn’t register the question being directed at him for a few seconds, looking around to see whether Napoleon had been talking to someone else.

Illya blinks stupidly. He feels unusually small in his Harvard hoodie, so he straightens his back in hopes of looking the opposite. “Me?”

Napoleon doesn’t gift him with an answer, only a narrowed look.

“I don’t know you enough,” Illya finally rasps out before burying his face in his coffee cup and resuming his reading.

Napoleon leans his head back like he’s impressed, pursing his lips before a smile finally broke out again. Illya doesn’t allow himself to look for more than ten seconds. “That’s a good answer.”

The lady, Erin, scoffs before scurrying back behind the counter. There’s a rush of students entering, chatters clogging up his ears and distracting him from reading. Illya glances at his wristwatch, the one that’s slightly frayed at the sides and have leather peeling off in some places, the one that used to be his father’s, and notes that it’s almost lunch time. He packs his things methodically, putting his book inside his bag last after carefully marking his page by folding the ends.

“You fold your books,” A voice says from beside him. Illya manages to control his flinch. “For some reason I can’t believe that. Aren’t Harvard students supposed to be opposed to such a practice?”

Illya looks up at him. He doesn’t know Napoleon quite as well back then, not like how he knows him now, knows how he looks with his eyes crinkled shut and mouth open in a loud cry, knows how the muscles in his back contract with every thrust, knows how his marbled white skin looks marked with Illya’s touch. Still, he’s as enamored as he is now. He looks at Napoleon and he sees the slightly curled ends of his gelled back hair, the redness at the tip of his nose and ears from the cold. He shouldn’t notice these things, Illya realizes, but Napoleon is an enigma. Illya can’t help but want to find out more.

It’s cold again, the feel of the cellphone cooler against his skin. He doesn’t allow his grip to let up. It would ring any minute, he knows. He dreads. He sees Napoleon walking from the other end of the street. The coffee shop stands between them, and it’s a metaphor Illya doesn’t want to comprehend. Napoleon did not bother with his hair this time, only tucked it inside a gray beanie with a few curls peaking out. Illya wants to pluck the material out of his head and bury his fingers in the soft strands of his hair, wants to keep them there until they’re too tangled to ever part. He hides his hands in his jacket pockets and hopes the urge would die down.

His phone rings. He doesn’t bother to look at the name flashing upon the screen. He knows who it is. Napoleon does, too, judging from the way his eyes (brighter and lighter and more beautiful than Illya would ever hope to have) flicker from Illya’s face down to his hands, where the ringing continues to sound.

“Don’t bring her here, Peril,” Napoleon tells him. His voice is quiet and they are ten feet apart, but Illya hears him loud and clear, like a drum beating right next to his ear. Napoleon’s voice is so quiet it deafens him. “Not here.”

Illya exhales through his nose, the air hot against the coldness of the area, of the situation. It should not be like this, he thinks. It never should have gotten this far. But Napoleon is Napoleon, and Illya is a weak, weak man. So even if nothing in their situation is okay, he says this instead: “Okay, Cowboy.”

-

Napoleon likes his coffee with tons of milk and no sugar. He thinks that skipping all the glucose will make the drink healthier, but that’s just him being stupid. Still, he’s been coming to this particular coffee shop since his second year at BU when he worked there as a barista. His boss didn’t like him much, though. He thinks that Napoleon gives too many free drinks to hot people, but he doesn’t get the philosophy that statistically, hot people need more coffee than ugly ones. He’d elaborate if he didn’t feel like throwing up at the taste of coffee in his mouth–one that has far too few milk and sugar and far too bitter. Napoleon doesn’t like the taste of bitter coffee. Illya does, though, and somehow in the middle of their fucked up entanglement he began to associate the taste with Illya. It’s still there in his mouth, in his skin, and he wants to scrub it raw and keep it there forever at the same time.

There’s this argument they always have, when they have a few wine glasses in their systems and they’re both flushed in the face and flushed against each other. Napoleon would ramble about Rembrandt and Monet and Illya would scoff at whatever he’s saying. He listens, though, Illya. He tries to act like he’s indifferent and uninterested but Napoleon knows he’s hanging onto every word that comes out of his lips. Napoleon should be used to that, by now, having all the attention to himself. He opens his mouth and his words become magnets attracting anyone within a mile radius. He doesn’t know why with Illya it feels different. He’s almost giddy at the knowledge that the Russian listens to him, even if he does try to hide it. Napoleon knows Illya. He knows him so much it hurts.

Illya would tease him in his little ways, too. It would be low and grumbled but the words do not lose their comic value. He’d mock the ‘The Scream’ sticker Napoleon has on his ID, and Napoleon would counter with teasing him about his fondness for flat caps. Illya would roll his eyes and Napoleon would be happy, unbelievably so, until Illya’s phone on the nightstand rings and he tenses up and Napoleon walks away. It’s a cycle. It’s not healthy. It’s them.

He grew up in New York at the heart of Manhattan. There’s a sushi place behind his apartment building that he liked to look at as a child, observing the people coming and going from the window of his room. They’d always look like superstars, clad in thick and expensive coats with diamonds and gold hanging from their necks and ears. Napoleon likes to eat his dinner watching that restaurant, his own little version of TV. He liked to imagine the smell of first class sushi, of fresh lettuce and medium well Kobe beef and jasmine rice. He’d take spoonfuls of bland beans and sometimes would even groan at the made-up taste, trying to convince himself he’s across the street dining in the best sushi place in the city instead of eating last night’s dinner.

He looks at Illya then, standing a few feet away in front of him and looking like the most beautiful man Napoleon has ever seen, ringing phone like gunshots to his ears, and he decides he still is a naïve little boy in that Manhattan apartment, yearning for things he cannot have. He can try, though. He can imagine having Illya, completely and wholly, without dreading the end of nights spent worshipping each other, fooling each other into believing they have no end _at all_ when the reality is theirs is a love affair for the shadows–hidden and mysterious and doomed and not entirely existing.

He looks at Illya, lets the Russian’s words echo in the silent but biting space between them, and then Napoleon walks away, because with Illya he’s learned that it’s best to be the man who turns around and leaves. It’s less painful that way.

-

Illya can’t pinpoint the exact moment Napoleon managed to slice open the skin of his pale chest and forced himself inside–a pretty parasite on an all-too-willing host. He tries to recall when his heart had started beating in the rhythm of Napoleon’s breaths, when his eyes started tracing the sharp lines of Napoleon’s edges like they’re the finest of art, but he comes up blank. He thinks it’s because with Napoleon, you can never really expect to know what happens next. It’s like going into war blindfolded, with only the sound of grunts and laughter like bombs and gunshots guiding him through. It’s dangerous, he knows. But Napoleon is addicting in the way he sucks on his tongue when they kiss, and the way he whimpers against Illya’s neck when they make love. It’s dangerous but Illya can’t bring himself to stop.

He thinks that Gaby is his rehab. She tries to visit him once every few months, makes an effort to call him every week. When she’s there she kisses him like she’s healing him, cleansing him of his sins that she knows nothing about. He tries not to compare how she tastes with Napoleon, whose sweetness of creamer in his coffee and spikiness of liquor stays embedded under his tongue like it’s his own. Gaby is all fruit and vodka. Illya likes vodka. He’s Russian. He isn’t addicted to it, though. Illya can function everyday without vodka. Illya’s addicted to coffee.

Whenever Gaby is in town, Napoleon disappears. Illya knows this. He’s known this since that first weekend Gaby turned up to surprise him, throwing her hands around his torso and giving him a big kiss. Napoleon stood just a few feet away, watching. Napoleon knew this would happen. Illya made sure of that. It doesn’t make it any less difficult. Illya tries not to look for him when he’s not around, when Gaby clutches his hand like a lifeline while walking through Boston streets. His eyes betray him, though, raking over every corner of every place in search for the familiar muscled frame, sleek black hair and sharp smile–an Adonis come alive. Gaby doesn’t notice. She only notices when Illya flinches when she unbuckles his belt, and when Illya takes more time than usual to be ready in bed while they lay naked side by side. She doesn’t say anything, but Illya knows she notices.

“Does she kiss you like this?” Napoleon whispers against his damp skin one night, splayed and spent and bare on the soiled white sheets of his apartment. He can still feel his lips and tongue and teeth nipping and licking and sucking on his body, can still shiver at the thought like it’s actually happening in the moment and not just in his head.

Napoleon moves a hand down and grips him, then, firm and sure and tender, and Illya cries out. “No.” There’s a tremble in his voice that Napoleon only ever brings out. “Never.”

Illya tries to convince himself he doesn’t think of that memory whenever he’s desperate and Gaby’s watching him with a barely concealed frown, waiting for him to be ready for her. He tries to tell himself he doesn’t need that memory to get hard, to function. He lies.

Napoleon rarely ever shows himself the moment Gaby leaves. He always waits at least a day. Illya spends a few hours in bath, clawing at his skin and scrubbing until he’s red and he feels less dirty. He doesn’t think of Gaby’s goodbye kiss and the relief that floods him in watching her leave. He doesn’t think of Napoleon probably counting down the seconds until it’s no longer inappropriate to seek him out. He doesn’t think of the impatience he feels at the thought. If he could, he’d always seek Napoleon out. If he could, they wouldn’t have to wait, they wouldn’t have to hide. If he could he wouldn’t have to feel this disgusted with himself. If he could he wouldn’t have been in love with Napoleon while he’s unavailable in the first place. He doesn’t think of the fact that he’d have loved Napoleon either way.

-

It’s these moments that slowly kill him, Napoleon muses to himself, staring at every tick of the clock in front of him and trying not to think of Illya being worshipped by someone else, someone who truly has him. Napoleon doesn’t have Illya. Napoleon doesn’t have enough. He thinks about getting a girl from the local pub, or drinking himself to sleep. He goes as far as flirting with a tall, blonde woman from MIT. She’s leaning down to give him a good look at her cleavage when Napoleon bolts up in his seat and walks away, a sad excuse for leaving stumbling out of his lips.

It’s unfair. He’s not supposed to fall in love with a man he can’t have. He’s not supposed to be contented in not having Illya. He’s supposed to be a thief. He’s supposed to be able to get what he wants. He’s supposed to be better.

He knocks on Illya’s door that same night and Napoleon hates himself a little. He knows his collar still bears the perfume of the woman from the pub. He knows he’s supposed to wait until the morning, at least, but he couldn’t even get himself to do that. He thinks he’s pathetic. He thinks he’s weak. Illya opens the door and pulls him inside by his tie, though, and Napoleon thinks he’s in love. Just a little.

“I’m sorry,” Illya breathes into his lips, and Napoleon tries to kiss the remnants of Gaby away from Illya’s body. He wipes every surface of skin he could reach with his tongue, replaces Gaby’s scent from his pillows in hopes that there’d be nothing left but Napoleon and Illya and _them_ , just the two of them. “I’m sorry, Cowboy.”

Napoleon removes his belt before getting his hands under Illya’s shirt, pushing the material up and feeling the heat of his skin against his palms, feeling every dip and curve and bumps of muscle. Napoleon kisses him again, harder, more meaningful. “It’s okay, Peril.”

_I still have this_ , he doesn’t say out loud. _We still have this._

-

“Why did you drop out of Harvard?” Illya asks Napoleon over breakfast one day. “I saw your old ID.”

Napoleon quirks an eyebrow at him. He looks beautiful in the morning light, eyes bright and hair a mess and Illya could _shudder_ , because he knows he’s caused this. He knows it’s his fingers that made Napoleon’s head look like a bird’s nest, his lips that left all those red marks in his neck and chest. He knows they don’t own each other but it feels like that anyway, especially in mornings like this when they let all guards down and wear no masks, when Illya can channel all he feels into a good morning kiss and a stroke tracing Napoleon’s spine in his back.

“There’s a professor who had a problem with my…dating preferences.” Napoleon shrugs. Illya feels himself tense up, but the American places a hand on his thigh and he calms down. He hates that about them. He hates that Napoleon could control him in this way. He hates that he can’t love it without feeling like he’s committing the worst sin of his life. He hates that he calls them a sin, because it’s the best thing he’s ever had in his life. He hates that he doesn’t deserve Napoleon, he never did, but Napoleon stays anyway. Napoleon chooses to settle. He chooses to stay. Illya hates that he can’t tell him to do otherwise. “It’s fine. I didn’t need Harvard anyway. My dropping out was a big fuck you to that professor, especially the part where I stole the original Picasso he managed to snag from a bidding in Madrid.”

Illya hides his fond smile behind a bite of the chocolate chip pancakes Napoleon made for them. “How did he manage to afford a Picasso?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Napoleon admits with a shrug. “The thought of him seeing that painting hung upon my dorm’s wall is enough to make me sleep better at night, though. Makes me wish stealing wasn’t such a crime.”

Illya scoffs. “As if you’d enjoy it anymore if it wasn’t.”

“Contrary to what you may think, I don’t enjoy going into things I know I shouldn’t _that much_.” Napoleon chides him.

Illya smiles. He doesn’t mean it to be bitter. It comes across that way, either way. “No. Only the ones you know would be doomed from the start.”

They are silent for a few seconds, Illya regretting his words and Napoleon pondering over them. Finally, just when the silence is about to become suffocating, Napoleon speaks. “If it gets me here, in this moment, with you…I don’t think I’d care if it’s doomed, Peril.”

Illya buries his face in Napoleon’s neck and cries. Napoleon whispers the words against his head, the first time he’s ever told them. Illya cries a little harder.

_“I love you.”_

-

Gaby finds out in the worst way possible. It’s a day away from spring break, and Napoleon has been staying in Illya’s place for the past few days, making up for the next week that they’d spend apart. They’re in bed kissing and naked and laughing and Illya’s door slams open.

Illya’s never sprung far away from him that swiftly before, he notes. Illya’s always craved touch, pulling Napoleon to his chest silently and falling asleep with their limbs entangled and their torsos pressed together. Illya, who already has his pants back on and running after his little girlfriend out the door. Napoleon stays in bed, staring up at the ceiling and contemplating when his life had turned out like this, when he started being a person that ruins relationships, when he had consciously allowed himself to become this pathetic mess of a man in love with someone who’s not his to love.

When Illya stumbles inside a few minutes later, heaving and eyes wet and face red for all the wrong reasons, Napoleon’s already dressed.

“Cowboy…” Illya says, pleas, eyebrows meeting in distress. “ _Please_.”

Napoleon looks down, because he doesn’t want to see the pain in Illya’s eyes, because he’s weak, because he knows that he’ll give in the moment their eyes meet, because he’s in love with Illya but Illya can’t let go of Gaby. “We shouldn’t have let this get this far.”

Illya deflates, physically becomes smaller at his words. “Please, Napoleon.”

“I never even asked you, did I?” Napoleon chuckles. “I never asked you why you couldn’t leave her. Not for me, anyway.”

“Napoleon–“

“It’s okay, Peril.” Napoleon says. He doesn’t have any tears to spare, but the feeling like his chest might collapse and his throat might constrict so tightly he won’t be able to breathe makes up for it. Napoleon thinks of the last time he saw Gaby and Illya together before today, thinks about seeing them walking from the other end of the street, remembers the fleeting hurt and betrayal he felt when he thought Illya was going to bring Gaby to their café. He remembers the relief, too, flooding his veins and making his heart start beating again when he sees Illya guide Gaby into another direction, somewhere farther and less meaningful. Napoleon considered that moment a win then. He told himself it’s enough. Sometimes it just isn’t. “I should go.”

He goes.

-

They’re in Napoleon’s car, a few weeks before everything fell apart. Illya wants to put his feet up the dash just to spite the American, but it’s not possible given his height and the size of the vehicle. He leans his seat back, instead, and crosses his arms behind his head. Napoleon glances at him every few seconds, smiling and shaking his head at the sight. Illya likes Napoleon’s smile. He likes it a lot.

“Cowboy,” He whispers. There’s a weird feeling of escape in the way their car drives down Boston in the cusp of midnight–the roads empty yet the lights ever bright. Illya thinks Napoleon looks beautiful with one hand on the steering wheel and another drifting between the gearshift and Illya’s thigh. He knows this wouldn’t last. He knows this, but he decides he doesn’t need it to. He just needs him. “I love you too.”

End.

**Author's Note:**

> What can I give that is all for you?  
> My heart's no good 'cause it's split in two  
> What can I give that is all for you?  
> These arms are all I have
> 
> But I'll hold you like I do love you  
> But I'll hold you like I do love you.


End file.
